A consortium of four real estate owners has put the 1.62-million-square-foot VSL Logistics Hub in the Montreal borough of Saint-Laurent up for sale.

Montoni, Lotus Immobilier, Montez Corporation and Jesta Group are selling the property at 3031-3207 Thimens Blvd., which was originally developed in 1976 as Sears Canada’s eastern Canadian headquarters and distribution centre. It was purpose-built to support large-scale distribution and fulfillment operations.

Avison Young is marketing the property, which was first sold when Sears encountered financial difficulties that resulted in it declaring bankruptcy and closing its final stores in January 2018. The current owners then renovated the facility to accommodate multiple tenants.

“They've effectively leased it out to four strong tenants and subdivided it, so it’s now a multi-tenant industrial and last-mile logistics hub,” Avison Young executive vice-president and head of the Quebec capital markets team Mark Sinnett told RENX.

“As they've completed the redevelopment of it, they felt the timing was opportune to sell.”

What VSL Logistics offers

VSL Logistics is situated on a 1.97-million-square-foot site that offers connectivity to public transit and key Montreal transportation corridors. It’s 1.5 kilometres from Highway 40 (the Trans-Canada Highway), five kilometres from Highway 13, 8.4 kilometres from Montreal-Trudeau International Airport and 10.8 kilometres from Highway 15.

The property’s physical attributes include:

• clear heights ranging from 14 to 42 feet;
• 68 truck-level loading doors and eight drive-in doors;
• five access points via Thimens Boulevard, Cavendish Boulevard and Beaulac Street; and
• fully sprinklered infrastructure with freight and passenger elevators.

VSL Logistics has benefitted from multiple expansions, modernization initiatives and institutional ownership.

“A lot of renovations were done and a lot of improvements were done to the property in order to make it functional for four separate tenants,” said Sinnett.

Tenancy and rents

The property is 97-per cent leased to a diversified tenant roster operating across manufacturing, logistics, e-commerce and industrial distribution. The major tenants are Mitchel Lincoln, Brighton-Best International, Wesco and Lufa Farms.

They have a weighted average lease term of 8.3 years and average tenure of 6.9 years. None of them represent more than 35 per cent of the property’s revenue.

Current in-place rents average approximately $5.30 per square foot, significantly below prevailing Saint-Laurent industrial market rents that range between $14.50 and $15.50 per square foot for comparable distribution space. 

Approximately 30 per cent of the property’s gross leasable area (GLA) expires over the next five years, so this pricing gap provides investors with substantial mid- and long-term rental growth potential in one of Montreal’s most supply-constrained industrial submarkets.

Lufa Farms occupies approximately 40 per cent of the property’s GLA, including five rooftop commercial greenhouses. VSL Logistics serves as a major logistics, fulfillment and distribution hub for the company, which fulfills more than 30,000 weekly online grocery orders through a vertically integrated e-commerce platform.

“I think that speaks to that last-mile capability of this property,” Sinnett said. “Everything comes to this location and gets picked and packed and then redistributed and sent out to clients.”

Sinnett expects the property to sell for a price in the $175 million range. While that may be too rich for some local private investors, he expects interest from national, and perhaps international, investors.

“You can think about this almost like five or six industrial buildings in one acquisition, so that provides a lot of scale in a truly best-in-class location,” said Sinnett. “Whether the market is up or down and whether things are going well or not, there is always going to be a strong flight to quality and that's going to begin with location.”

The Montreal industrial real estate market

The Greater Montreal Area industrial real estate vacancy rate, which had been rising steadily since hitting a low of 1.4 per cent in 2021, stabilized at 7.2 per cent in the final quarter of last year, according to Avison Young’s Q4 2025 Montreal industrial market report. 

There was 26.3 million square feet of vacant space, including 2.87 million square feet of sublet space, and 2.5 million square feet under construction in 12 projects. 

Rents stabilized at around $14.50 per square foot, down from a 2023 peak of $16.80, which provides landlords with enough flexibility to offer more generous incentive packages in order to secure financially solid tenants. 

“I characterize it as a healthy market,” said Sinnett. “There's enough availability for tenants to be able to move and find space that's more adequate for their needs and there's enough movement in the marketplace that landlords that might have some vacancy are getting groups to come through.”